ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the present crisis of planning, specifically in light of Latin American experience. The modern idea of planning reaches back to the beginnings of the nineteenth century, when Henri Saint-Simon, inspired by young engineers from the new Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, envisioned a new and humane society, freed from the shackles of agrarian feudalism. The story of national planning in Latin America begins, oddly enough, with the imperial history of the United States. Planners started with a technocratic approach to the guidance of developmental change. To the extent that civil society is included in this planning project, open democracy becomes an essential instrument of national transformation. Although the Alliance soon hit rocky bottom, the idea of planning, institutionalized during the early 1960s, persisted. Traditional planning, especially during the 1950s and 1960s, was addressed primarily to the state and corporate capitalist sectors.
